Being & Becoming Whole in a World in turmoil
We are all deeply affected by witnessing the global atmosphere of division, devastation, and turmoil. As witnesses to this insanity, it is natural to feel dark emotions - despair, grief, fear, anger, helplessness, sadness, and a sense of existential confusion and meaningless.
At a personal level, we are struggling to deal with our dark emotions, the personal insecurities and inner wounds of past and present events and contexts. In retreating into addictions, numbness, or distractions, we try to escape the increasing sense of instability and threat to our mental and spiritual wellbeing.
This book is a personal story of one man's exploration of the ancient idea of wholeness as a way of dealing with colliding inner and outer worlds. This book offers an original guiding framework to help the reader to discover and develop their own unique wholeness. It is a personal, ‘spiritual but not religious’ narrative that offers ways that we may become aligned with our highest potential amidst increasing turmoil and instability.
One Reader's Review:
I love how books land in life when you are ready for them. Peter's book is an invitation to wake up to all of who you are. It's not a call to escape into nature, forget your troubles and bliss out. This is a call to meet all of who you are, your Divine goodness and your messy badness. To walk through life holding all of you in wholeness. With presence and awareness you cross the threshold into a place I imagine to feel true freedom. This book leads you along the way. Thank you Peter and your many guides for guiding and even simply stating that there is a way to wholeness.
Sarah V, Sydney, Australia
I want to share with you how and why I came to discover and become consciously whole. Becoming whole has little to do with my career and work experiences, primarily as an environmental planner over a 20 year period. I am no psychotherapist or life coach or director of a research or training organisation. I may not be in the upper echalons of personal change agents such as Echart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, or Gabor Mate but I have my own unique life path, full of holes and wounds and insecurities, that you and many others might relate to. If the idea of becoming whole attracts you, if navigating your way through the wounded worlds within and around you is important, then please read on. I may just be able to help you.
It was through immersive experiences in nature, following my NatureConnect approach, that I became aware of two aspects of wholeness: 1) the experience of being whole, enough and acknowledging and accepting of the parts of myself (the good, bad, and the ‘ugly’) and my life situation, and 2) the wholeness of the natural world i.e all the parts of a forest contributing to the health of the whole but arising from the whole (forest). Although I didn’t label these experiences, these insights as wholeness, I later realised the importance of wholeness via profound nature connection to my psychological and spiritual wellbeing.
Through reading the books about wholeness by the American educator Parker Palmer and American physicist David Bohm, as well as the commendation by my spirit guide, Michael (yes, a scientific oriented thinker can be spiritual too!), I recognised the usefulness of wholeness as a guiding idea and framework for coping with mental health, for becoming authentic and aligned to your total self, in understanding the nature of reality and identity, and for clarifying life direction issues. At the beginning of my exploratory journey, early 2020, I was in a dark hole, overwhelmed by confusion about life direction, feeling lost within myself, a broken relationship, and no-one to turn to.
So, in early 2020 with the arrival of the COVID 19 pandemic, I committed to getting my act together, to take responsibility for my unhappiness and lostness, and learn what it meant to become whole, to overcome my inner brokenness and fractured thinking. The circumstances were not ideal, surrounded by massive bushfires, then floods, then marriage breakdown, financial insecurity, autoimmune illness in my youngest son, social isolation, and moving home five times in five years. The etymology of whole means healing, and in these circumstances, I felt broken, anxious but yearning to be whole.
As I came to learn, brokenness or persistent emotional or psychological instability and fragility can be the conduit, the cracks in the armour that allows the light of self-understanding to filter through. It is feeling and relating into the wound that the healing can be experienced. I had been carrying my psychological armour, unconsciously so, all of my life, primarily to protect the fears, pain, insecurities and other wounds from childhood and earlier. A large part of becoming whole is awakening to this, to understand how your behaviours, thinking and feeling state patterns, and your pain and suffering in general, have been directed from these childhood adaptations and ensuing wounds. So I learnt all of this without guidance except my spirit friends and through research and contemplative, reflective practices. The book was part of this journey and the program I offer arises from the book and distilling my life and wholeness experiences.
“The world has changed and continues to change rapidly and dramatically, yet humans’ inherent needs and essence haven’t changed. In this timely and thought-provoking book, Dr. White offers a fascinating and comprehensive analysis of the unique essence and manifestations of wholeness. He perceptively and sensitively touches on enduring qualities that are at the core of our existence as human beings and weaves together theoretical and personal insights into an integrative and accessible framework which reconnects us with the beautiful, mysterious and inspiring experience of being fully and meaningfully alive.
It offers a testimony of hope and self-discovery in face of a wounded world. The triumph of the human spirit emerges not from discarding our wounded parts but from embracing our imperfections and rejoining them as pieces of a unique masterpiece and a more complete whole. I believe that thanks to its richness and broad perspective, this book is not only useful for interested readers who want to learn more about wholeness, but also carries great value for scholars and practitioners to further develop this valuable concept.”
‘Years ago, after a number of setbacks in my own quest for wholeness, I realized that those “setbacks” had to be included in my own understanding of who I am. That’s when I wrote words that have served me well for decades: “Wholeness does not mean perfection; it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” In this important book, Peter White dives deep into his own life experiences of wholeness and brokenness, as well as the perspectives of fellow explorers of wholeness. In this candid enquiry, he comes up with valuable insights that will help your own journey toward wholeness. Read and you will be rewarded!’ —Parker J. Palmer
Parker J. Palmer PhD is an internationally acclaimed American writer, speaker and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. He is the founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. He has written ten books, selling over two million copies, including ‘Let Your Life Speak,’ ‘A Hidden Wholeness,’ and ‘On the Brink of Everything’.
‘A well-researched and superbly articulated declaration of one man’s journey to wholeness. Peter White has done the work to not only research and understand the journey, but to expand his own abilities and self-awareness into the extraordinary. In this, he embraces and communicates the challenges of all who walk the mystical and rational path so that others may benefit.’ – Joanne Helfrich
Joanne Helfrich is an American author, teacher and channeler whose integrative and spiritual work facilitates personal, organisational, and collective transformation. She has written four books, including her most recent ‘Afterlives: Firsthand Accounts of Twenty Notable People’
Wholeness in daily living includes taking a broader perspective to the world and relations around you so that your engage from your highest self. In doing this, you open to new insights and perspectives that shed light on your identity and your world. Here are my sharings
Ever watched the evening news and experienced that sinking feeling, a sense of despondency, a tinge of despair? It might be for the victims of the brutal Russian-Ukraine war, the record flooding wiping out lives and livelihoods in Lismore and elsewhere, another bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef
If you have read the book and are interested to know more about my story, my experiences, or about the program, drop me a line here.
